Making a Mint

There is now only one holder of the licence to print UK coinage, and that is the Royal Mint. This was not always the case. For more than 1500 years from the Iron Age to the Restoration of Charles II, coins were struck by hand. To begin with there were many English ‘moneyers’ operating in towns and villages across the Kingdom.

People laboured in what were little more than blacksmith shops hammering blanks between a pair of dies.

A single mint was set up in 1279 within the Tower of London and operated there until it then moved into purpose-built premises on Tower Hill. The present modern coinage plant was built to start the process of minting coins for decimalisa-tion in the UK in 1971. These premises are in Llantrisant in South Wales.

The Royal Mint now boasts some of the most advanced coining machinery in the world. It works like this:

In the foundry, strips of metal are drawn from large electric furnaces, reduced to the required thickness in a tandem rolling mill and transferred to large blank presses where coin blanks can be punched out at the rate of 10,000 per minute.

The blanks are softened and cleaned in the Annealing and Pickling Plant before the final process in the Coining Press Room. Here the blanks are fed into coining presses where the obverse and reverse designs, as well as the milling edge, are stamped onto the blank simultaneously.

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The latest presses can each strike more than 600 coins per minute to a standard of accuracy imposed by law. To ensure that the composition of the alloy is correct, samples of the molten metal are routinely checked by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. Each year samples of coins struck both for the UK and overseas are presented to the annual Trial of the Pyx where they go through rigorous quality examination by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

The number of coins in circulation in the UK exceeds 18 billion coins with a face value of £2 billion.

In 1975 the Mint was established as a Government Trading Fund, operation-ally very similar to a government-owned company. For many years half its sales have gone abroad. This role as an exporter was emphasised when it became an Executive Agency, providing it with greater freedom to develop its business further.

The Royal Mint has maintained its position as the world’s leading exporting mint.

During 1995–96 the Royal Mint produced coins and blanks for 82 countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe.

The Royal Mint can satisfy any requirement of a country for a complete range of coinage. To ensure the uniqueness of any coin in any country, the Royal Mint houses, on behalf of all the world’s mints, the Coin Registration Office. This ena-bles advice to be given to countries considering new coins so that they can avoid specifications identical to existing coins in other countries. The Royal Mint also maintains close contact with the vending industry worldwide and continuously in-creases the range of security features that it can offer to discourage counterfeiting.

Of all the distinguished people to have served the Royal Mint perhaps the most unexpected and highest ranked is Isaac Newton. The scientist had a 30-year asso-ciation with the Mint as Warden and then Master. He took a lot of interest in the Mint despite being informed on his appointment that it should not take up too much of his time. In fact the Government wanted the Mint to provide Newton with an income that still left him relatively free to pursue what they regarded as more important matters.

Four Greatest Licences to Print Money

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Newton became heavily involved in the dramatic increase in production occa-sioned by the great silver recoinage of 1696–98. He was actively involved in the setting up of five mints elsewhere in the country.

But mainly his Warden’s duties were concerned with the protection of the coin-age from clippers and counterfeiters. This drew him into the underworld, where his usual zeal turned him into a doughty and persistent opponent of such as the infa-mous William Chaloner, who paid for his forgery on the gallows.

As the Master he was more responsible for the production of coins, where his desire for accuracy kept variations in the weight of new coins within very small tolerances. It must have been a brave Company of Goldsmiths who challenged the composition of the sample coins in 1710. It was particularly brave since it turned out not to be true.

His name lent huge prestige to the Royal Mint and his advice was sought by many. It was even sought by the Scots during the recoinage of the old Scots money in 1707 caused by the Union of the Crowns.

Newton’s contribution to the Mint was not so much in innovation or change, but much more in the integrity and scientific accuracy of production. This legacy is maintained to this day, and the reputation of the Royal Mint is still held very high.

‘And these I do not sell for gold, Or coin of silvery shine,

But for a copper halfpenny, And that will purchase nine.’

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)

Ask yourself

• Who holds the licence to print money in your industry? Are they vulnerable?

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